Sümeyra Güneş

Sümeyra Güneş is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology. Her research focuses on the entitlement that makes an identity joke possible; the punitive/legal, social, and professional consequences of these jokes; and the boundary-crossing/boundary-making practices of stand-up comedy in Istanbul. She is interested in the role jokes and humorous stories play in performing identities, with a primary focus on jokes targeting religion, culture, ethnicity, and sexuality. In relation to that, she aims to measure resentment and analyze how the lines of acceptable representation as well as offense are drawn and negotiated between Istanbul’s comedians and their audience. Although her research is based in Turkey, it has broader theoretical relevance to the ways we think about the workings of humor and offense in politically fraught contexts. Sümeyra holds a B.A. in Literature from Boğaziçi University and M.A. in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University. She began her Ph.D. in Sociology at Koç University, then received the Fulbright Scholarship in order to pursue her academic goals in Anthropology at Boston University. To learn more about Güneş’ research and publications, visit her webpage.

In Spring 2025, Sümeyra received a CISS Summer mini-grant to support her archival research on historical uses of humor in response to trauma, displacement, and political repression. The research will enrich her analysis of how humor operates as emotional endurance, social critique, and cultural memory in contemporary contexts of crisis. Learn more in our featured article.